Tag: ArtSpace

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Five New Downtown Projects

Changes — big and small — are planned for downtown spaces in moves that follow the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the city’s urban core and the national trend of urban revitalization. 

These five changes were slated for a vote by the Downtown Memphis Commission’s Design Review Board this week:

1. Central Station: With a price tag of about $55 million, the Central Station plan is no doubt one of the biggest development projects in the works for downtown. 

The project will completely transform the corner of Main and G.E. Patterson. The train station is currently home to an Amtrak station, a Memphis Police Department substation, apartments, offices, the Memphis Railroad and Trolley Museum, and the Memphis Farmers Market.

Artist’s rendering of Central Station

The Henry Turley Co., Community Capital, and their partners plan to overhaul the 100-year-old structure and its campus for a hotel, a six-screen Malco movie theater, a restaurant, seven new apartment buildings, a new space for the farmers market, public spaces, and more. Developers also plan to move the trolley stop that sits across G.E. Patterson from The Five Spot to a new site close to Main and St. Paul.     

2. South Main ArtSpace: Artspace is known nationally for creating low-income housing for artists and hopes to do the same in Memphis in an abandoned warehouse on St. Paul. 

The Minneapolis non-profit organization has built similar spaces in Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Reno, Houston, and more. Artspace chose Memphis for a site in 2011 and has been raising the $16 million for the project ever since.    

With the money now in hand, officials believe they can start construction around the old United Warehouse building in April and finish the project around July 2017. Crews will renovate the warehouse building and construct a new four-story building next to it.

When it’s done, the Lofts will feature 58 apartments, commercial space, community space, and a gallery.   

3. Gould’s Day Spa & Salon: The high-profile, long-vacant, southwest corner of Union and Main will be the new home of the downtown Gould’s as it moves from its long-held space inside the Peabody Hotel. 

The company will spruce up the exterior of the corner with an outdoor patio, new signs, and new windows. Inside, the new Gould’s will have styling stations, a shampoo room, a barber area, and a foot massage station.

4. Facing History and Ourselves: The new office on Huling for the educational nonprofit organization will get a face-lift with some new signs and a big mural. 

Since 1992, Facing History and Ourselves has helped students examine racism, prejudice, and anti-semitism for “a more humane and informed citizenry.” It recently moved to a new office close to the National Civil Rights Museum. 

The centerpiece of the renovation project will be 25-foot-long mural that will face Mulberry Street and feature diverse individuals engaging with one another in different settings.

5. The Tower at Peabody Place: Belz Enterprises hopes to attract new clients and retain existing ones in the Tower at Peabody Place by putting those clients’ names on the side of the 15-story building.    

The names would be lettered in block bands between the building’s windows. The signs would be about three and a half feet high, stretch about 66 feet, and would glow at night.

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Tennessee Whiskey Festival at Artspace

It was just pure luck that this weekend’s Tennessee Whiskey Festival at the South Main Artspace Lofts is happening during the annual RiverArtsFest. “I’m not really that knowledgeable about Memphis,” organizer Jay Heavilon admits.

The first Tennessee Whiskey Festival was held in 2013 in Chattanooga as a fund-raiser for HArt Gallery, which is run by Heavilon’s wife and provides art materials and instruction to the homeless. The second Whiskey Festival is a fund-raiser for the second HArt Gallery, which will open in the Edge District next year. Proceeds will also go to Artspace.

Heavilon says he decided to go with whiskey for a festival because there was already a wine festival and a brewers festival in Chattanooga, plus he saw a rise in craft distillers in the area. The Memphis festival will feature eight craft distillers: Pyramid Vodka, American Born Moonshine, Belle Meade Bourbon, Southern Pride, Beechtree, George Dickel, Pennington’s Strawberry Rye, and Prichard’s Distillery.

Festival-goers get a passport and a souvenir glass for samples. Representatives from the distilleries will be on hand to answer questions. Water and snacks will be provided. There will be a cash bar with cocktails and High Cotton beer, too.

“It’s an acquired taste,” says Heavilon of whiskey. “We teach you how to smell, how to taste. This is really a how to taste whiskey event.”

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Art Brew

Exterior of the Tennessee Brewery building

In 2003, the Flyer ran two articles — one in April and one in December — about an ambitious plan to transform the old Tennessee Brewery into affordable living and working space for artists.

A group of local artists calling themselves ArtBrew had enlisted the help of Minneapolis-based ArtSpace, a nonprofit with a successful track record of helping artists convert historic spaces into apartments and studio space for artists. And the plan had the backing of the Center City Commission (now known as the Downtown Memphis Commission).

ArtBrew artists had a vision of constructing apartments inside the building, and those would be reserved for working artists who were otherwise priced out of the downtown housing market.

“The remainder of the brewery’s rooms would be converted into a number of arts-related spaces: a dance studio, a cinema, various studio spaces, gallery and exhibition space, nonprofit and for-profit commercial and retail office space, a media cooperative, a publishing cooperative, an iron-forging shop, arts classrooms and workshop space, and possibly even a microbrewery to revive the building’s heritage,” read the April 2003 article.

ArtSpace representatives came to Memphis to meet with the project’s backers, and ArtBrew was asked to raise $500,000 to get the project kicked off. But according to the building’s current listing agent James Raspberry, the group simply couldn’t raise the startup funds.

More than 10 years later, the hulking brewery building, once home to the Goldcrest beer operation, remains empty. This building is a time capsule of Memphis architecture.

Interior of the Tennessee Brewery building

“Look up and you see wrought-iron railings of the open, winding staircases that frame each floor. The windows were strategically placed so that natural light floods in, throwing ornate shadows from the decorative latticework of the railings,” reads that April 2003 article. “It was once the site of a bustling beer industry, and hundreds of feet traversed that very floor each day. The worn concrete, scattered with flakes of rust, seems to welcome new feet after years of abandonment.”

But Raspberry said the building’s current ownership group has plans to demolish the 114-year-old structure if someone doesn’t step in to purchase it in the next six months.

“At this juncture, someone needs to purchase the property. The ownership group is ready to hand off the baton,” Raspberry said.

The current owners purchased the building 12 years ago, and they’ve repaired the south wall and installed a new roof, but Raspberry said “kids have gone through and just vandalized the building and ruined two to three sections of the roof.”

As for ArtSpace, they finally found a feasible project in Memphis in 2011. They’re currently working with the city to transform the old United Warehouse space on St. Paul in the South Main Arts District into affordable home and studio space for artists. The project is still in the pre-development phase and is estimated to cost $12.9 million. ArtSpace has made an application to the state for low-income housing tax credits, and they’re currently awaiting a response before moving forward with the next phase. The project is expected to be completed by 2015.